New fan controller just died

[Elstupido]

Just bought a Silverstone FP33 3 fan controller. It all of a sudden quit working, question is, should I RMA this and get another Silverstone, or are there better controllers out there.

Just running 2 80mm and one 90mm fans right now. Sure was nice when it was working due the reduced noise, and very little loss of cooling. One option that would be nice is the ability to totally shut down any of the fans, which the Silverstone won't.

 

[Zepper]

I can't see any way for it to go bad as it's entirely passive, isn't it? For it to go bad, the 12V power would have to have become disconnected. Try hooking up another molex from the PSU to it.

.bh.

 

[Elstupido]

Yes it is passive, not much more than a 1" square card with 3 variable resistors, molex conector, and fan connectors on it. Doesn't seem to be any kind of chip involved.

Only thing I can think of is when I removed the controller from the drive bay and placed it on my desk (to improve airflow) I could have possibly damaged the card thru electrostatic discharge.
However this seems unlikely because of the rudimentery design of the card.

BTW, Newegg just issued me a credit for this without having to RMA. Oh man does Newegg truly rock! Fantastic customer service.

 

[Zepper]

Well now you can figure out why it's not making contact with power and have your cake while eating it... Looks like it would be very easy to get the cables from the rheostats bass ackwards. And remember, it does have to have a molex connector from the PSU connected to the little connector board, as well as the leads from the rheostats and fans.

.bh.

 

[Elstupido]

There is only one way for the fan and rheostat connectors to be connected, it is keyed. the molex is connected from the psu, haven't tested it yet with my Fluke, no need to, as the fans would not work as they now do at full speed if the molex was bad.

As I said it worked fine until I pulled the rheostats from the bay. Mystery to me, but then again this is simple electronics, not a huge degree of technology involved here.